Masahiro Sakurai | Code Like It's 198x

Kirby began as a placeholder. While Masahiro Sakurai was designing a Game Boy platformer at HAL Laboratory, the hero was a round blob called Popopo, drawn to stand in until a proper character was ready. Sakurai grew to like it and kept it. The game became Kirby’s Dream Land (1992), made to be finished by players who had never finished a platformer. Seven years later Sakurai took the same approach to fighting games with Super Smash Bros., and he has directed the series ever since.

Fast facts

Born: 1970, in Tokyo.
HAL Laboratory: joined at 19; left in 2003.
First game as creator: Kirby’s Dream Land (Game Boy, 1992).
Super Smash Bros.: director of every game in the series, from the Nintendo 64 original in 1999 to Super Smash Bros. Ultimate (2018).
Since 2003: freelance, working through his company Sora Ltd., set up in 2005.
Other games: Meteos (DS, 2005), Kid Icarus: Uprising (3DS, 2012), Kirby Air Riders (Switch 2, 2025).
YouTube: Masahiro Sakurai on Creating Games, 2022 to 2024.

Kirby’s Dream Land

Sakurai joined HAL, in Tokyo, as a 19-year-old graduate. HAL programmed games for Nintendo; it came close to bankruptcy in the early 1990s until Nintendo rescued it, and Satoru Iwata became its president in 1993. According to Wireframe, Sakurai set out to go “against the grain” of platformers of the time, “with their one-touch deaths and precisely timed jumps”, and make one players of any age could get through.

Retro Gamer tells how the hero was found. The game was first called Twinkle Popopo, and its hero Popopo was a placeholder, a round shape with stubby limbs that was quick to draw. As work went on, Sakurai “gradually fell in love with the placeholder design and decided to keep him”. Popopo was renamed Kirby, and Sakurai has said he does not remember why.

Kirby’s Dream Land came out on the Game Boy in 1992. Kirby can inhale enemies and spit them out, or puff himself up and float over any gap. There were only five stages between Kirby and King Dedede. Nintendo Magazine System fell for him in December 1992, calling him “surely the cutest character ever to find his way onto the Game Boy”. GO!, the handheld supplement to Computer and Video Games, listed the items he could swallow: a microphone whose singing made enemies explode, spicy food that let him breathe fire, and a mint leaf for a stream of “air pellets”.

The game was a success and started a series. Sakurai directed the next Kirby games at HAL, including Kirby’s Adventure (NES, 1993), in which Kirby first copied the powers of the enemies he swallowed, and Kirby Super Star (SNES, 1996). Asked by Edge in 2001 which of his games he liked best, Iwata named the first Kirby and Smash Brothers, because he “was involved pretty closely and deeply” in them.

Super Smash Bros.

In a 1999 interview with the Japanese magazine Nice Games, Sakurai said the fighting game began as a prototype made with Iwata’s help, with plain human fighters and the working title Kakutō Game Ryūō (“Dragon King: The Fighting Game”). Before asking whether they could use Nintendo’s characters, the team built four of them into the game, then showed it. Wireframe reports that Shigeru Miyamoto at first resisted the idea.

Super Smash Bros. came out on the Nintendo 64 in Japan in January 1999. It played nothing like Street Fighter. There was no energy bar. 64 Magazine explained that each fighter had a hit gauge that “starts at zero and rises every time a character takes some punishment”. The higher it rose, the further a blow sent a fighter flying. Players won by knocking each other off the stage, rather than battering an opponent “into submission”. Up to four could fight at once. “It’s a unique system, but it works,” the magazine decided, and gave the British release 87% in December 1999.

Sakurai directed the GameCube sequel, Super Smash Bros. Melee (2001). Players kept it going long after Nintendo had moved on: in 2013 Melee was added to the Evo fighting game tournament, and more than 100,000 people watched its stream.

Leaving HAL

In August 2003 Sakurai announced in his column in Weekly Famitsu that he was leaving HAL. Wireframe reports that he left because he was afraid of getting stuck in a rut of sequels. In his own words, “It was tough for me to see that every time I made a new game, people automatically assumed that a sequel was coming.”

He became a freelance designer. His first job was Meteos, a falling-block puzzle game for the Nintendo DS, for Tetsuya Mizuguchi’s Q Entertainment. “As a freelance game designer, it is necessary for me to design any genre of the games given to me!” he told Edge in 2005. That year he and his wife, Michiko, set up their own company, Sora Ltd.

Sora, Kid Icarus and Smash

Sakurai returned to Smash as a freelancer. Super Smash Bros. Brawl came out on the Wii in 2008. He kept a development blog as he made it, and Edge reported that he had been trying to bring Sega’s Sonic into the game, which he did.

Nintendo then set up a studio for him, Project Sora, to make Kid Icarus: Uprising for the Nintendo 3DS (2012), the first new game in the series in 21 years. Edge found “Sakurai’s prints are all over Uprising”, which balanced “depth and accessibility with little compromise”, and gave it 8 out of 10. Retro Gamer grumbled about its controls but called it “one of the finest reboots we’ve ever experienced”. The Kid Icarus entry covers the series.

Iwata announced a new Smash Bros. for the Wii U and 3DS in 2011, before the game had properly begun. Edge noted that Sakurai had removed Brawl’s random tripping, which “rather killed the game as a competitive pastime”. Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U came out in 2014, and Super Smash Bros. Ultimate for the Switch in 2018, both made with Bandai Namco.

On Creating Games

In August 2022 Sakurai started a YouTube channel, Masahiro Sakurai on Creating Games, of short videos on game design, which he wrote and recorded himself. In January 2024 he said the channel would end so that he could concentrate on a new game. The last regular episode came out on 15 October 2024, followed by a finale special.

That game was Kirby Air Riders, a racing game for the Switch 2 released on 20 November 2025 and the successor to Kirby Air Ride, which Sakurai had directed at HAL in 2003. In December 2025 Sakurai said the development team would soon disband and there would be no more updates after a last round of balance changes. He has not announced a next game.

Sources

Wireframe issue 17, June 2019, pp. 50–52: HAL Laboratory profile (Nintendo’s rescue and Iwata as president; Sakurai joining at 19; Kirby’s Dream Land in 1992 and its design aims; Miyamoto and the Smash Bros. crossover; Sakurai leaving HAL and the sequels).
Retro Gamer issue 109, December 2012, pp. 10 and 81–85: Kirby’s history (created by Sakurai at HAL under Iwata; Popopo and Twinkle Popopo; the name).
Retro Gamer issue 103, June 2012, p. 11: Kirby’s design came from Sakurai at HAL, not Miyamoto; the copy ability.
Nintendo Magazine System issue 3, December 1992, p. 102: Kirby’s Dream Land review (five stages; “the cutest character ever”).
GO! (supplement to Computer and Video Games) issue 15, January 1993, pp. 24–25: Kirby’s Dream Land review (£24.99; the items).
Edge issue 103, November 2001, “FAQ: Satoru Iwata”: the first Kirby and Smash Brothers as the games he was most involved in.
Nice Games, 1999, Sakurai interview, translated as “Super Smash Bros. – 1999 Developer Interview”, shmuplations (web, secondary): the prototype and its title; the four Nintendo characters; joining HAL at 19. https://shmuplations.com/smashbros/
Computer and Video Games issue 209, April 1999, p. 16: Smash Brothers import feature (HAL Laboratory; Nintendo 64).
64 Magazine issue 35, December 1999, pp. 61–63: Super Smash Brothers UK review (the hit gauge; knocking fighters off; four players; 87%).
Edge issue 258, October 2013: more than 100,000 viewers for Melee at Evo 2013.
Edge issue 128, October 2003, p. 13, and Hyper issue 120, October 2003, p. 26: Sakurai leaving HAL, announced in his Weekly Famitsu column.
Edge issue 149, May 2005, pp. 13–14: interview on Meteos (freelance since 2003; Q Entertainment).
Wikipedia, “Masahiro Sakurai”, “Sora Ltd.” and “Kirby’s Adventure” (web, secondary): his reason for leaving HAL, in his words; his direction of Kirby’s Adventure, Kirby Super Star and Kirby Air Ride; copy abilities introduced in Kirby’s Adventure; Sora Ltd. founded by Sakurai and his wife Michiko in 2005; Project Sora; Melee in 2001; the YouTube channel’s start in August 2022; Smash for 3DS and Wii U and Ultimate with Bandai Namco. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masahiro_Sakurai, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sora_Ltd. and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kirby%27s_Adventure
Edge issue 171, January 2007, p. 17 (Brawl and Sakurai’s development blog); Edge issue 175, May 2007, p. 23 (Sonic); Edge issue 183, Christmas 2007 (Brawl due in Japan in January 2008).
Edge issue 239, April 2012, p. 122: Kid Icarus: Uprising review (Project Sora; 8/10).
Retro Gamer issue 102, May 2012, p. 97: Kid Icarus: Uprising review (Project Sora’s first game).
Edge issue 256, August 2013, p. 55: the new Smash Bros. for Wii U and 3DS (Iwata’s E3 2011 announcement; tripping removed; developer Sora; due 2014).
Shacknews, “The last regular episode of Masahiro Sakurai on Creating Games is set for this month”, 3 October 2024 (web, secondary): the January 2024 announcement, the last episode on 15 October and the planned finale. https://www.shacknews.com/article/141662/masahiro-sakurai-on-creating-games-last-episode
Nintendo UK, “Kirby Air Riders: Development Insights with Masahiro Sakurai – Part 1”, 13 April 2026: Sakurai as director. https://www.nintendo.com/en-gb/News/2026/April/Kirby-Air-Riders-Development-Insights-with-Masahiro-Sakurai-Part-1-3069151.html
Liam Doolan, “Kirby Air Riders Dev Team Disbanding Soon, Game Updates Also Ending”, Nintendo Life, 13 December 2025 (web, secondary): release on 20 November 2025; Sakurai’s statement. https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2025/12/kirby-air-riders-dev-team-disbanding-soon-game-updates-also-ending